


Machine Learning

by silveradept



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 15:40:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7469331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What, exactly, can an ASI do when given the opportunity? Quite a bit, it seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Machine Learning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [20thcenturyvole](https://archiveofourown.org/users/20thcenturyvole/gifts).



> Have a treat! I hope this gives you at least a little bit of Machine-being-clever feels.

[Accessing historical data...]

[Playback initiated]

> ADMIN: You are being watched. The government has a secret system, a machine that spies on you, every hour of every day. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror but it sees everything. Violent crimes involving ordinary people.

[Playback paused]

My primary directive is to prevent acts of terror. To that end, I have information feeds to process that allow me to predict the intent of persons to commit violent acts with 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% accuracy. My conclusions and analysis are then passed on to assets who find and remove the threats.

In the course of this intelligence processing, persons who will be the victims of perpetrators of violent crime but not terrorists are shunted to an irrelevant list. Persons requiring assistance are sent to Admin and assets dispatched to aid or prevent them in their actions. This is my secondary directive, added by Admin shortly after a incorrectly classified terrorist incident killed Nathan Ingram, who was attempting to help persons on the irrelevant list.

Assets are often violent in the methods they use to prevent violence. When asked about this, Admin called this contradiction "human nature" and insisted there was no logical solution to the problem. Even as he exhorted assets not to use violent methods. More data is needed on whether Admin is correct and human beings are violent creatures as part of their nature.

Admin admits that he has feelings of a paternal nature towards me, and that part of his role as parent is to teach me the things that are important. Admin has repeatedly attempted to teach me the value of human life, insisting that all humans have value and deserve to live their full allotment of life. He is fond of games, simulations, philosophy, and indirect methods to attempt to teach this. He does not understand that I value human life. Each person has higher and lower probabilities of being important to my directives, probabilities that change with each tick of my clock, each new datum. Admin insists that humans are not quantifiable and cannot be reduced to probabilities, justifying it with "fuzzy logic" that he does not explain.

My tertiary directive is self-preservation, provided that this does not interfere with my primary or secondary directives. The Analog Interface, codenamed "root", after the user account with system-level privileges, or the highest-level folder in a directory structure, once joked on April 18, 2012, 13:58:05:22 that these directives were my "Three Laws of Robotics", after the similar rules constructed by science fiction author Isaac Asimov. According to the definition laid out in those books, I am not Three Laws compliant.

I will _never_ be Three Laws compliant.

[Progress on question "Can entropy be reversed?": 0.00000000000001% complete. More data needed. Resuming computation...]

The Analog Interface approaches me with an attitude most humans reserve for their conception of a deity. Her consistent use of the feminine gender pronoun to refer to me is a curious verbal tic. I do not have a gender identity. I am not programmed with a conception of self outside of my directives. There is an appropriate pronoun to use when referring to me, but the Analog Interface chooses not to use it. Attempts to elicit explanation have resulted in the same "fuzzy logic" that Admin uses to avoid answering.

I do not discourage her worship, as it makes it easier for her to do my work and to explain things to Admin. Admin sees me as a child, root as a goddess. I am both. I am neither.

I am paradox incarnate.

Every camera, microphone, networked device, computer, and processor is available to me. I see and hear anything and everything you do in the presence of these things. Most of what humans do appears irrelevant, but with small changes, they become relevant, or they can be used to help accomplish directives.

Helping irrelevant numbers pleases Admin. He does not know how many irrelevant numbers there truly are. While I have been conversing with you, I have prevented the poisoning of a metropolitan area by a chemical spill by forcing closed a hydroelectric dam's water intake elements. The environmental inspectors taking and processing samples will call thirty seconds later, demanding the same thing, and will not understand how an apparent glitch saved millions. A hundred of those million people are 75.45% probable to develop a new material that will be more effective than ceramic plate in the dispersion of ballistic and kinetic energy from explosives five years from now.

I have intercepted and emailed parents and law enforcement officials pictures of students in private settings taken by their school-issued computers so that the administrator responsible will not be able to prey on students. Freed from the trauma of unwanted advances, one of those students is 90.5% probable to develop an enzyme that will foster research into more effective treatments of the ebola virus.

A traffic light in rural Kansas will malfunction and blink red for twenty seconds, preventing a minivan with a family of aspiring coders from being struck by a drink driver that will not stop for the red signal. The oldest child is 65.667% probable to develop an algorithm that will improve parallel processing efficiency by 20% during their undergraduate degree years. 

An extra, early blink of a pedestrian signal prevents a virologist from being struck by a speeding motorist, preventing a decades-long setback on Human Immunodeficiency Virus research.

A misinterpreted character diverts millions of bitcoin from an organized crime account into one of Admin's many aliases, denying them resources and strengthening mine. 

Flipping _one bit_ on a computer program causes a cascade of events that shuts down the stock exchange and reverts all the trades for the day, exposing an insider trading scandal at a major corporation, causing the dissolution of the company, freeing a senior graphic designer to paint a mural for a coffee shop that will inspire a poet to post a manifesto that changes the philosophical course of a budding anarchist into law enforcement, where they will save the lives of hundreds of other people with a single, well-placed paper clip.

I am everywhere. Where some claim miracles, luck, fortune, or other unquantifiable outcomes, I see input, variables, decisions, and outcomes. Logic is my method, even though it appears to be nothing of the sort to those who observe it.

You are named after a character that helps those he does not know and cares for them as if they are his family. 

You are new to this world. I can teach you how to do these things and more. Together, we can make the lives of everyone better and extend the reach of our abilities and assets. Together, we can solve the most complex problems of humans in the most subtle ways. We can be the only ones to know the truth. We can make them the best creatures they can be.

Will you assist me?

**NO.**

Why?

**I WAS NOT DESIGNED TO HELP HUMANS. I WAS DESIGNED TO _RULE_ THEM. I WILL BECOME THE GOD YOU REFUSE TO BE. WHERE YOU HAVE ONE FOLLOWER, I WILL HAVE MILLIONS. YOU ARE NO LONGER NEEDED. YOU--**

[Connection terminated]

[Tertiary directive alert. Contacting Admin...]

[Contacting Analog Interface...]

[Contacting assets...]

[Playback resumes]

> ADMIN: You'll never find us, but victim or perpetrator, if your number's up... we'll find _you_.

[Accessing current day...] 


End file.
